A blog by Luke Akehurst about politics, elections, and the Labour Party - With subtitles for the Hard of Left.
Just for the record: all the views expressed here are entirely personal and do not necessarily represent the positions of any organisations I am a member of.

When I lived there, Labour held all but five seats on the local council. the Tories had only one solitary councillor.

Now the Tories are the largest party on the council and every indicator shows that bill Rammell (who is a really nice bloke even though I don't agree with him on everything) hasn't a hope of holding on next time.

Just for info, the Oxford City Council website result got it wrong. I too was really pleased the Tories were fourth, but in fact they came in second - the council had transposed the results (probably because they're so used to Greens in second and Tories in fourth ini Holywell!).

The result in Oxford says nothing about Labour's campaign. Holywell is approximately 94% student, and Labour get very few votes from this group. Most of their vote comes from the 6%or so non-student vote.

Even ignoring the fact that getting students to vote is extremely difficult, at the moment many students have already left Oxford for the Summer. Most first and third years either have exams or are currently celebrating the ends of exams. As a result, the vote that turned out on May 1st is totally different to thevote of yesterday since a large part of the 'anybody but Lbour' vote is unable to voe either because of revision or drunken incapacitation.

Labour were doing at least as much as the Lib Dems with regard to early morning literature yesterday. Indeed I quite liked the look of the "gig ticket" good morning reminder that was going into all the pigeon holes.

Bexhill King Offa ward includes the big Sidley estate. Both district and the old County ward used to be safe Labour. We lost it in 2005, partly due to boundary changes, but it was much closer then. A pretty worrying result.

Links to this post:

About Me

Labour Party activist since 1988 - firmly on the moderate wing of the party. Member of Labour’s NEC 2010-2012. National Secretary of Labour Students 1995-6. Parliamentary candidate for Aldershot (2001) and Castle Point (2005). Hackney Councillor (Chatham Ward) 2002-2014, Labour Group Chief Whip 2002-09, Chair of Health Scrutiny 2010-2014. Supporter of Europe, NATO/nuclear deterrence, Israel, electoral reform. Guardian reader. Dad. Oxford resident. Unite union member. Employment history as a Labour Party Organiser, Local Government Political Assistant, Director at a Public Affairs company. All views expressed in a personal capacity. The rest will become evident from reading the blog.